Grollo pays to have his family next door

Picture: CRAIG ABRAHAMBruno Grollo checks out the view of his new block of land from his inground trampoline.

How much would a grandparent pay to have their children come to visit more often? Well, for developer Bruno Grollo that joy has a $632,500 price tag.

Mr Grollo recently paid that amount for a weatherboard home in Gillies Street, Thornbury, on 800 square metres that stood between him realising his dream to complete the Grollo compound.

The property was the last piece in the jigsaw that made up the compound, which takes up two-thirds of the block and stretches to include the Station Street frontage.

The weatherboard home was between his own home, Casa Del Matto (house of the madman), and his daughter Lee-Anna's corner block.

The missing-link house belonged to widow Heather Gillin, who died two years ago. In 1988 she told The Age that she would not sell at any price. In 1988, Mr Grollo offered her the then remarkable price of $250,000 for her home and also offered to relocate her and buy her a car. Mr Grollo said that he then left the matter at that.");document.write("

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The house then passed to Mrs Gillin's daughter, Pam Gillin, who had lived there ever since and also told Mr Grollo she would not sell.

Some time before September, Ms Gillin contacted Ray White Northcote estate agent Mario Lionetti for an appraisal. "We gave her an appraisal and everyone knows about the woman who would not sell to Bruno Grollo. We told her there was only one real buyer for it and it was Bruno so it really depended on what he was prepared to pay for it," Mr Lionetti said.

Mr Grollo, who bought the house in September, said he was glad the block was "squared off". He has demolished the house and built a new fence. The compound is now the equivalent of eight regular house blocks.

"I'm wondering now whether I should have paid what I did for it now. They (agents) had me worried that someone could come and put three or four two-storey apartments on it, which pushed the price up. It couldn't have really been worth more than $400,000," said the man who gave us the Rialto and the Eureka Tower.

"I've been living with it for 20 years and I don't know that I've done the right thing. Now the grandkids can be over more. They can ride their bikes straight through and run around in the back yard. Not that it was too bad before, they would just go one door down," he said.

His three grandchildren next door - Alani, 4, Emma, 7, and Mathew, 9 - and his four others to his other children Daniel and Adam can now frolic among the grass and trees and jump on an inground trampoline.